Blood Trail (Joe Pickett #8)

It's elk season in the Rockies, but this year a different kind of hunter is stalking a different kind of prey.
Game wardens have found a hunter dead at a camp in the mountains--strung up, gutted, and flayed, as if he were the elk he'd been pursuing. A spent cartridge and an old poker chip lie next to his body. Suddenly, two previous suspicious hunting accidents are viewed in a new light--are they murders, too?

Long Synopsis:

When the call comes in on the radio, Joe Pickett can hardly believe his ears: game wardens have found a hunter dead at a camp in the mountains--strung up, gutted, and flayed, as if he were the elk he'd been pursuing. A spent cartridge and an old poker chip lie next to his body. Suddenly, two previous suspicious hunting accidents are viewed in a new light--are they murders, too?
Ripples of horror spread through the community, and with a possibly psychotic killer on the loose, Governor Rulon is forced to end hunting season early for the first time in state history--outraging hunters and potentially crippling the state's income from the loss of hunting license revenue. But when the increasingly brutal murders eerily coincide with the arrival of radical anti-hunting activist Klamath Moore, Pickett knows the governor's ruling is the least of his worries. Are the murders the work of a deranged activist or of a lone psychopath with a personal vendetta?
As always, Joe Pickett is the governor's go-to man, and he's put on the case to track the murderous hunter, as more bodies--and poker chips--turn up.